The purpose of this experiment was to perform a reduction of vanillin and used TLC to follow the reaction. Two TLC plates were prepared using a 2:3 EtOAc/Hexane. 2 mL of methanol was added to 200 mg of vanillin in a 5 mL conical value. 25 mg sodium borohydride was added in the vial, which resulted in bubbles forming. This is the indication that the reaction was occurring. The TLC plates were spotted in the interval of 15,30,0 and 120 seconds. The plates were placed under a UV lamp to identify the movement of the solutes. The Rf values calculated for each interval. As seen in table 1, the Rf value for (0,15, 30, 60, 120 s) is 0.125, 0.10, 0.175, 0.19, and .19 respectively. The Rf value were very low. This shows that the solutes were polar because it interacts with the silica gel. Looking at the structure of vanillin, it is capable of hydrogen bonding. This means that vanillin is a polar molecule, which explained for the low Rf value. The final product was vanillyl alcohol, which is also polar. The structure of vanillyl alcohol has two alcohol functional groups, allowing to hydrogen bond. Hydrogen bonding indicates polarity. Based on the TLC results, the reaction was almost completed. The Rf value generally increased at each time interval with the exception at 30 and 120 seconds. The reason was probably due to human error. It was difficult to spot the TLC plates at the exact time, which will result in less accurate Rf values. Moreover, …show more content…
There is a lot of absorption between wave length 1500- 500. The main difference is that from wave length 3000-2000, the peaks dip lower. This indicates that most of the absorption occur around the range. There is also a greater dip in peak between wave length 4800-3500 seen in the IR spectra of the product compared to the spectra found in the data based. Overall, the spectra are still similar in trend, but differ in magnitude of